Wednesday, November 26, 2008

This was sent to me today. A pretty good explanation of the tax system that we have. I always get a little irritated when people get huffy about "tax breaks for the rich".

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.The fifth would pay $1.The sixth would pay $3.The seventh would pay $7.The eighth would pay $12.The ninth would pay $18.The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

I am not familiar with the specifics of the Florida legal process, but I hope this sticks. Adoption should never be blocked from potentially loving parents so long they are sane and capable of supporting and loving the child. Here is a quote from the article:

In a 53-page order that sets the stage for what could become a constitutional showdown, Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman permitted 47-year-old Frank Gill to adopt the 4- and 8-year-old boys he and his partner have raised since just before Christmas four years ago. A child abuse investigator had asked Gill to care for the boys temporarily; they were never able to return to their birth parents.

''This is the forum where we try to heal children, find permanent families for them so they can get another chance at what every child should know and feel from birth, and go on to lead productive lives,'' Lederman said in court before releasing the order. ``We pray for them to thrive, but that is a word we rarely hear in dependency court.'

Stanford Magazine reports on the applications from psychological research Carol Dweck's work, which uses careful experiments to determine why some people give up when confronted with failure, while others roll up their sleeves and dive in.

Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure—and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings, says Dweck, “really supported the idea that the attributions were a key ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns.” Her 1975 article on the topic has become one of the most widely cited in contemporary psychology.

Attribution theory, concerned with people’s judgments about the causes of events and behavior, already was an active area of psychological research. But the focus at the time was on how we make attributions, explains Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross, who coined the term “fundamental attribution error” for our tendency to explain other people’s actions by their character traits, overlooking the power of circumstances. Dweck, he says, helped “shift the emphasis from attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions—why it matters what attributions people make.” Dweck had put attribution theory to practical use...

...[S]ome of the children who put forth lots of effort didn’t make attributions at all. These children didn’t think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: “Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’” During one unforgettable moment, one boy—something of a poster child for the mastery-oriented type—faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair, rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, “I love a challenge.”

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

Friday, November 21, 2008

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has answered a resounding "You betcha" to the question "Can she be anymore oblivious?" After pardoning a turkey for Thanksgiving, Governor Palin gave a surreal interview with a local news team yesterday - right in front of a dude slaughtering turkeys. Amazing. My favorite part is the look on the guy's face as he realizes "Wow, you're really going to do this." Then gets back to work because it's Alaska, and it's fucking cold out. In the meantime, someone needs to tell Sarah Palin's the elections over, so she can stop reciting the words John McCain wrote on the inside of her eyelids ad nauseum. Jesus, lady. I don't see how Todd Palin doesn't spend the majority of his day purposely getting rammed in the ear by snowmobiles. Unless he's somehow immune to shrill. Thanks to heather! who should be appointed Secretary of the Awesome.

I generally agree with Seth Godin on what would be best for Detroit and the US related to the auto manufacturers. We need a massive wave of innovation and companies, laws and regulations that will enable it for us. Unfortunately, status quo maintainers will work hard to stop this at every turn. From Seth's article:

Not only should Congress encourage/facilitate the organizedbankruptcy of the Big Three, but it should also make it easy for themto be replaced by 500 new car companies.

Or perhaps a thousand.

That's how many car companies there were 90 years ago.

Topped of with the right business model to enable and thrive in that world:

I'd spend a billion dollars to make the creation of a car companyturnkey. Make it easy to get all the safety and regulatory approvals...as easy to start a car company as it is to start a web company. Use the bankruptcy to wipe out the hated, legacy marketing portion of the industry: the dealers.

We'd end up with a rational number of "car stores" in every city that sold lots of brands. We'd have super cheap cars and superefficient cars and super weird cars. There'd be an orgy of innovation,and from that, a whole new energy and approach would evolve.

ABCNews says that the big three auto CEOs "flew to the nation's capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy."

Just because your company is on the verge of bankruptcy— well, that's no reason not to arrive in style. Right?

From ABC:

All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM's $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.

"We want to continue the vital role we've played for Americans for the past 100 years, but we can't do it alone," Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee.

While Wagoner testified, his G4 private jet was parked at Dulles airport. It is one of eight luxury jets in the GM fleet that continues to ferry executives around the world despite the company's dire financial straits.

ABC estimated that the trip cost GM $20,000, as opposed to a first class ticket on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington — which would have cost about $800.

Amazingly, private jets are a luxury that even free-spending AIG is reconsidering.

AIG, despite the $150 billion bailout, still operates a fleet of corporate jets. The company says it has put two out of its seven jets up for sale and is reviewing the use of others. Though there are no such plans by GM or Ford.

Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute writes about the effect of the economic slowdown in China.

[T]he fact that the US meltdown has now flowed into China is potentially disastrous for this most populous nation, but as its exports shrink and its factories shut, the meltdown is starting to flow back to America again, making an ugly situation even worse.

This vicious cycle is playing out in interconnected ways. Reduced Chinese exports to the US mean that the Chinese have less foreign currency to lend back to America, which further exacerbates the credit crisis and tends to tighten the money supply, making it more difficult for Americans to buy Chinese exports (or anything else).

The solution (for the US, anyway), says Darley: "rebuilding of the American and British manufacturing economies (less so the European), along with the supply chains to feed it and the return of the knowledge and skills to recreate it and run it." The China Syndrome Bites Back

When Alice and I were planning our honeymoon on Roatan, Honduras (more on this later!), we knew we'd need something for the baby to sleep in -- a mosquito net to go over the crib? Something else?

I happened on KidCo's PeaPod Travel Bed on Amazon and was intrigued. It's a tensegrity-based pop-up bed/net that also works as a sunshade on the beach, and best of all, it folds up tiny, not much bigger than a toilet-bag.

I took a chance and ordered it, and I was delighted with the thing. It was comfortable, airy, bug-proof, and incredibly cool. You extract this little disc of nylon and coiled wired struts out of the case and it literally springs open in your hand, instantly turning into a perfect kid-bed with an audible whomp. It kept out the sand-fleas and sun on the beach and the mosquitos at night. It let in the breeze, and it provided shade by the pool.

Some of the reviewers have complained that the thing was hard to get back in the case, but I got it on the second try and never had trouble with it afterwards. The "quilt" that comes with it is a little junky, but we didn't need it in the tropics. Highly recommended.

The last thing you need while you're traveling with a baby is to lug a lot of extra luggage around. Rather than packing a Pack'n'Play or a folding bassinet, which are cumbersome and heavy, simply pack the ultra-light, super-compact PeaPod away in your suitcase. At 14 x 5 x 14 inches (LxWxH) when closed, it takes up little space, and it comes with a carrying case for easy portability. And at 48 x 30 x 18 inches (LxWxH) when open, the PeaPod will take up little space once you reach your destination.

The PeaPod is also designed to open and fold shut quickly and easily. Other than the included air pump for quickly inflating the small mattress, no tools are needed: simply follow the directions to "snap" it into its standing position, and fold it back down quickly when finished. So whether you're traveling across the country, making a weekend trip to the beach, or simply spending the day at a friend's house, the PeaPod Portable Travel Bed makes it super-easy and convenient for baby to sleep comfortably and safely while on the go.